Window screens in the present art serve as physical barriers to prevent insects and other foreign matter that exceed the size of the gaps between the screen wires from passing through the window frame in which the screen is installed. The limitation of traditional window screens is their ineffectiveness against particulate suspended in the air that are smaller than the size of the gaps between the screen wires. Traditional window screens are generally ineffective against dust, pollen, mold spores, bacteria, and other allergens, dirt, and pollution suspended in air that are small enough to pass through the screens.
Specialty window screen replacements designed to filter out the aforementioned air contaminates exist, but designs in the current art do not allow for the passage of air as quickly or freely as traditional window screens, and/or are opaque, preventing or reducing the ability to see through the window frame in which the screen replacement is mounted. Many of the current art designs are simply fibrous filters, such as HEPA filters, that serve as physical barriers to airborne particulate. Such filters allow for a window to be opened only a fraction of the way, limiting the amount of air that can pass through the window frame and preventing or reducing the ability of a person to see through the portion of the window frame area occupied by the filter.
Indoor air purifiers utilizing electrostatic principles are known in the current art, but existing designs are specific to removing contaminants suspended in indoor air by circulating and processing the air. Popular commercially available electrostatic air purifiers are stand-alone units designed to be placed inside of a building and work by mechanically or electro-kinetically moving air over electrically-charged electrodes that ionize and trap airborne particulate.
Additionally, there are industrial electrostatic purifiers designed to be installed in the airflow of building heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems that ionize and trap airborne particulate as air is moved through the HVAC system. Similarly, there are also technologies in the current art that are designed to electrostatically remove airborne particulate in large-scale industrial settings, such as factory smokestack scrubbers and other exhaust outlets. Existing designs predominately consist of multiple planar wire mesh screens mounted in airflow pathways (such as smoke stacks or ventilation ducts) substantially parallel to each other and charged to high voltage electric potentials.
A limitation of indoor electrostatic air purifiers in the existing art is that they are designed only to reduce the amount of airborne contaminate already in a building, they do nothing to prevent airborne contaminants from entering a building. In the case of the industrial air purifiers, they are generally designed to reduce the amount of airborne particulate exiting a building via exhaust gasses. There is no technology in the current art that is designed to minimize or reduce the amount of contaminant entering a building through building windows by employing electrostatic air-purification principles.